Poll: NYC voters tired of Mayor Bloomberg

Take three days of unplowed, snow-covered streets, add an unpopular pick for schools chancellor, and throw in a lousy economy forcing budget cuts and teacher layoffs. Divide by a third term.

The answer, at least according to a Quinnipiac poll released last week, is 39 percent. That's the percentage of polled registered voters who approved of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's performance -- his lowest numbers in eight years and a stark shift for a politician who once enjoyed approval ratings in the mid-70s.

Bloomberg rebounded strongly from deep unpopularity in his first term, winning re-election by wide margins. But his campaign to repeal term limits so he could run for a third term alienated many New Yorkers, and his third victory was his narrowest. Polls show that a majority of New Yorkers disapproved of his administration's handling of the post-Christmas snowstorm, in which vast swathes of the city were left impassable. The fallout following his choice of magazine executive Cathie Black to succeed Joel Klein as schools chancellor was another miscue, several political experts said.

Third term's not a charm

But the mayor's biggest problem, they said, may simply be the length of his tenure, a sign of the discontent of New Yorkers wearied by what is now the 10th year of his mayoralty.

"Third terms are hard in terms of the rationale, and I think there is no clear rationale, other than that people thought he was doing a good job and he wanted to hang around. But that can go away with a bad blizzard or other issues," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted polls showing 37 percent approval ratings for Bloomberg in January, and 44 percent in February. "If this was his first term, you'd pick a few battles and you'd have political capital to spend. In a third term, your political capital's a lot less."

Miringoff and others predict that while the mayor's popularity will probably improve, especially if the economy perks up, he's unlikely to see any more 75 percent approval ratings. But Bloomberg, who leaves office in 2013, has weathered strong disapproval before, notably when he first took office and raised property taxes.

"Then what he did, and really the guy deserves credit for it, he very, very painstakingly built his numbers. They didn't just zoom up, they went up bit by bit," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute. "It took a while to get there. People thought he was a little distant, he started marching in parades, doing all the things politicians do, and gradually New Yorkers got to know him and they got to like him. This is his first negative in eight years, and that's a long time."

Mitchell Moss, a New York University professor of urban policy and an informal adviser to Bloomberg, attributed the low ratings to a combination of winter doldrums and the mayor's willingness to tackle sacred cows such as the teachers' union.

"Mike Bloomberg is taking on some of the most difficult issues that most politicians are afraid to even mention, which is pensions and teacher tenure," Moss said. He pointed to the administration's revitalization of the waterfront both in and outside Manhattan, the continued drop in crime, and the mayor's management of the city's budget as achievements that will help define his legacy. "He's taken on the long-term big issues," Moss said.Relatively speaking, Bloomberg's poll numbers may not even be that bad, said George Arzt, a political consultant who served as Mayor Ed Koch's press secretary during Koch's own turbulent third term.

"You can't compare it to where he was earlier in his tenure; you have to compare it to where the other three three-term mayors were," Arzt said, referring to Koch, Fiorello LaGuardia and Robert Wagner. "It's awfully difficult to keep up your favorable ratings in a third term."

Koch's poll numbers dropped almost immediately after starting a third term in January 1986 amid the city's corruption scandal, and reached a low of 28 percent by April 1989. But he bounced back.

Still, don't 'bet against him'

What remains to be seen is whether Bloomberg's once-stellar standing has slipped for good, or if the negative numbers are a blip. Arzt, for his part, said he "wouldn't bet against him."

"He has so many resources that the other three-term mayors did not have, and people know he's going to be around and going to be extremely significant in the life of this city even after he's out of office," he said.

But Doug Muzzio, a professor at Baruch College's School of Public Affairs, said New Yorkers may just be sick of what he called the mayor's "my way or the highway, I don't feel your pain and I don't want to" personality.

"He's been pretty Teflon, and it seems that the Teflon's worn away from continued use," Muzzio said. "I think he's got a real straw and camel's back situation here, and the snowstorm was several bales of straw on that camel's back. If the back isn't broken, certain vertebrae have been displaced, causing pain."